Second version of Stuxnet virus is virtually identical to first incarnation

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, October 20, 2011

The re-emergence of the Stuxnet virus in a virtually identical form to its previous incarnation heralds a “new round of cyber war,” and given the fact that the last version was created by the U.S. and Israel, it’s obvious where the finger of blame should be pointing once again.

“Analysts at US firms McAfee and Symantec agreed that a sophisticated virus dubbed “Duqu” has been unleashed on an apparent mission to gather intelligence for future attacks on industrial control systems,” reports AFP.

“This seems to be the reconnaissance phase of something much larger,” McAfee senior research analyst Adam Wosotowsky told AFP about the virus, named for the “DQ” prefix on files it creates.

The new incarnation of the virus is primarily aimed at the Middle East and is designed to “mount a future attack on an industrial control facility” by capturing password data and infiltrating networks undetected.

“McAfee and Symantec said that, based on snippets of the virus they were given to study, portions of the encrypted Duqu code matched identically scrambled portions of Stuxnet,” states the report.

After last year’s Stuxnet worm attack targeted Iranian nuclear plants, the New York Times reported, months after we had first identified “Israel and the United States….as the prime suspects behind the Stuxnet worm attack,” that the virus was indeed created by the U.S. and Israel.

“The covert race to create Stuxnet was a joint project between the Americans and the Israelis, with some help, knowing or unknowing, from the Germans and the British,” reported the NY Times on January 15.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Even after it was all but admitted that the United States and Israel created Stuxnet to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, the establishment media’s coverage of the new incarnation of the worm is completely absent that fact.

Perhaps we can expect to be labeled “conspiracy theorists” once again for stating the blindingly obvious – that while US cybersecurity officials concentrate power and funding in the name of defending against cyber attacks, they are the ones launching them. The US and Israel is once again behind the attack and it will primarily be aimed at disrupting Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

As we documented, before the New York Times reported that the U.S. and Israel were behind the attack last year, numerous talking heads claimed there was no evidence to suggest this, blaming Russia or China instead, and demonizing those who pointed the finger at the obvious culprits for circulating “ridiculous” theories.

It really scales the heights of hypocrisy to hear the arguments of US cybersecurity officials about the need to hand them the power to control the Internet in the name of protecting against cyber warfare, when the U.S. government itself is behind almost every act of cyber warfare.

Earlier this week it also emerged that the Obama administration considered opening its assault on Libya by launching a cyber attack to “disable the Qaddafi government’s air-defense system”.

Given the fact that strong rumors of an attack on Iran have been circulating for several weeks, this round of cyber warfare could be the opening salvo for something far bigger.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.